


Beside Still Waters

by vanillafluffy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Gen, Headcanon, I am backstory's bitch, Religion, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 03:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7919035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky reconnects with a part of his past that he's been estranged from for a very long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beside Still Waters

The parish priest, Irish like so many in the neighborhood, anointed him with blessed water from the holy font. He was baptized James (in honor of his maternal grandfather, Seamus, but a more American variation) one of the most popular names for boys in 1917. 

Almost a century later, after many great and terrible adventures, he is back in the metropolis of his birth, and the rituals of his childhood begin to reassert themselves. 

He's walking through the park in Brooklyn Heights one afternoon after getting off work. His cafeteria job is undemanding, but he enjoys feeding people, seeing them well-fed and satisfied. Afterward, he takes pleasure in seeing New York again, much changed in the time he's been away, but still a part of him. 

There's a man sitting on one of the benches overlooking the East River, doing something with a length of paracord James is curious enough to wander over to watch. The man is tying knots in the brown cord, perfectly spaced single knots with more ornate knots at regular intervals. When he joins the two ends of the cord, he begins working them together and in a miraculously short time, he's worked the ends into the shape of a cross. 

"Wow." James isn't aware he's spoken aloud, until the man looks up and smiles. He has a small pair of scissors on a loop of ball-chain around his neck, and he trims the ends of the cord. He must be very experienced in his craft, because the ends are only a couple inches long. 

"It passes the time," says the man. He has thinning salt-and-pepper hair, and James estimates his age as around sixty. He takes an oblong plastic sandwich bag from a box beside him, coils and puts the completed rosary into it. He opens the lid of a plastic shoebox, nearly filled with a colorful array of knotted cords and deposits the brown rosary in with the rest. "Would you like one? I make them to give away. They go to nursing homes, homeless shelters, chaplains and missionaries, wherever someone may need comfort."

"My mother had a rosary someone brought back from Rome for her." James hasn't thought of that in decades, but now the green marble beads with the silver crucifix is as vivid as his mother's face. "But I--it's been a long time."

His companion nods. He has another length of cord in his hand, dark green this time, and is using his splayed fingers to gauge where to place the first knot. "It's not too late."

Isn't it? He has so many atrocities on his conscience that he could wear out a dozen rosaries praying and still not atone for all the lives cut short. A trickle of holy water won't wash away his sins. If he could find a priest to bless an Olympic swimming pool, and stayed it it for forty days and forty nights, he'd still be tainted by his former wickedness. 

This time, the rosary-maker works slowly, praying aloud as he knots each bead. His voice isn't over-loud, and James silently fills in the words along with him. Not consciously; they are just there, familiar, if a little rusted at first. 

His mother, with the beads that had been a gift from the lady he worked for before she was married...she always had them in the pocket of her housedress , taking them out during quiet moments of the day to murmur a decade of prayer. "Pray without ceasing," she used to say, but James wasn't that constant. 

When his sister Rebecca was so sick with polio that they didn't know if she'd live, let aline walk again...he remembers going to St. Patrick's, begging God not to take his baby sister, lighting candle after candle--Becca had pulled through, but she'd still been on crutches when he shipped out for the war.

The last time he prayed the rosary was when he'd been captured in Italy. He'd been terrified, trudging through the woods, defenseless, surrounded by The Enemy. The man next to him had been reciting Hail Marys under his breath. He'd joined in...Dugan, a big Boston Irishman, no slouch in a fight, but here he was, praying as earnestly as an altar boy as they marched toward the unknown. 

He's amazed at how many memories surface--of their parish church, St. Anne's, just down the street...the nuns who taught Sunday school, fierce and pious. The time Father Milligan came to their apartment for tea, and Ma was mortified because Da brought out a bottle and he and the Father both got tight.... In those days, nuns wore habits and priests weren't tarnished by scandal. James likes the current Pope, though--he seems like a genuinely good guy. 

By the time the rosary is finished, James feels a remarkable sense of calm. 

The man places the dark green circle in his palm and gently folds his hand around it. "Peace be with you," he says. 

"And also with you," James says absently as the man walks away. 

He still feels dazed from being submerged in so many memories. Not in a bad way, but it's been a very long time....

When he looks up from the knotted cords in his hand, the maker is gone. There's just the broad expanse of the East River with the Brooklyn Bridge dominating it in the near distance. 

Peace? He hadn't thought it was possible, but he feels...if not peace, something that will pass for it. 

..  
.

**Author's Note:**

> My Bucky-muse insists this is true. YMMV.


End file.
